DAYMET Temperature and Precipitation Data
Tolu Odukoya & Lee LeBoeuf
9/27/2021
Data Source
The Data Used Here
- Daymet is a data product derived from a collection of algorithms and computer software designed to interpolate and extrapolate from daily meteorological observations to produce gridded estimates of daily weather parameters. Weather parameters generated include daily surfaces of minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, vapor pressure, radiation, snow water equivalent, and day length produced on a 1 km x 1 km gridded surface.
- The motivation for producing Daymet is to provide measurements of near-surface meteorological conditions where no instrumentation exists. Having estimates of these surfaces is critical to understanding many processes in the terrestrial biogeochemical system.
- The data shown here includes the monthly average maximum temperature for the months June, July, and August, the average maximum temperature across the entire year, and the annual total precipitation. The data covers years from 1980-2020. The maximum temperature was originally recorded in Celsuis and the precipitation in Millimeters, they were both converted to Fahrenheit and Inches respectively.
- Data are available at the block, block groups, tract, and county levels for Albemarle, Charlottesville, Louisa, Greene, Fluvanna, Nelson.
- To Learn More, See: Daily Surface Weather and Climatological Summaries
- Below we show summaries of the data at the block group level, and then we show variation by county over time.
Variable Descriptions and Summaries
These summaries are based on data at the block group level from the years 1980-2020. Data are also available at the block, tract, and county levels.
## Rows: 246
## Columns: 10
## $ GEOID <chr> "51003", "51003", "51003", "51003", "51003", "51003", "5…
## $ year <int> 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 19…
## $ STATEFP <int> 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, …
## $ COUNTYFP <int> 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3,…
## $ NAMELSAD <chr> "Albemarle County", "Albemarle County", "Albemarle Count…
## $ June_AvgMaxTF <dbl> 82.61, 85.41, 79.71, 82.82, 86.22, 81.83, 86.28, 85.32, …
## $ July_AvgMaxTF <dbl> 89.09, 85.08, 85.64, 89.89, 83.12, 85.08, 89.46, 90.43, …
## $ Aug_AvgMaxTF <dbl> 88.34, 83.20, 82.05, 89.26, 84.36, 82.72, 81.57, 87.64, …
## $ AvgAnnMaxTF <dbl> 66.73, 65.99, 66.21, 66.38, 66.96, 67.42, 67.26, 66.89, …
## $ TotpercInch <dbl> 36.17, 38.77, 43.59, 52.46, 52.75, 50.84, 36.66, 50.11, …##
## Summary Statistics
## ===============================================
## Statistic Mean St. Dev. Min Median Max
## -----------------------------------------------
## June_AvgMaxTF 83.40 2.19 77.40 83.40 88.86
## July_AvgMaxTF 87.11 2.61 80.32 87.24 92.36
## Aug_AvgMaxTF 85.20 2.62 79.76 85.26 91.08
## AvgAnnMaxTF 67.20 1.56 62.88 67.21 70.66
## TotpercInch 46.86 9.05 30.62 46.64 81.44
## -----------------------------------------------Visual distribution
These distributions show data at the block group level from the years 1980-2020. Data are also available at the block, tract, and county levels. 
$label [1] “June_AvgMaxTF: The average maximum temperature for a daily period over the entire monthly period for the month of June. Converted to Fahrenheit during data clean”
[2] “July_AvgMaxTF: The average maximum temperature for a daily period over the entire monthly period for the month of July. Converted to Fahrenheit during data clean”
[3] “TotpercInch: The total accumulated precipitation over the monthly period of the daily total precipitation, summed into total yearly precipitation. Sum of all forms of precipitation converted to a water-equivalent depth. Converted to inches during data clean”
Block Group Variation in 2020
All of the following maps show data from the year 2020, but data are available for years 1980-2020.
Average maximum annual temperature
Average maximum August temperature
Monhtly summaries are also available for June and July.